Thursday, 3 September 2015

A post about foolishness

What is the matter with everyone? Is this the 'internet' or have people always been nuts?

The very first day on my very first Saturday job I had a man tell me that I should be wearing a lead vest. Because of all the dials on the luminous clocks in the jewelers I worked at.

He was deadly serious. He came back the next week with some 'data' from the library.

Being a novice, sixteen year old, and not knowing aboutthe 10%, I did look at it. A story about the women who painted the luminous clock dials in the early part of the 20th century. Some of the clocks were Westclocks, which we were selling.

But when I pointed out to him that the 'RADIUM GIRLS' were actually ingesting the radium through licking their paintbrushes to shape and had 1000 times the natural level of radiation in their bodies, and had been working in the factories for years and years... he became upset. He was even more upset when the Boss came across and told him clocks hadn't been using radium for 20 years anyway.

Went away shouting that he would inform the council and have us shut down.

Would he have been any happier if he'd been able to look up more data on 'The 'Interweb'?

I doubt it. He was very happy with his radiation poisoning theory. He was delighted to think that the radiation from a watch dial was equivalent to a teapot of polonium 210.

He would only have been saddened to discover the radiation from the monitor he was using to look up that information was 1000 times greater than the watch face. Or the pavement he walked in on had given off 100 times the radiation of the alarm clock. But he would have been very happy if he found an obscure webpage of "THEY ARE POISONING US.COM". Very happy indeed. Worth a tweet, I'd wager.

People don't like their pet theories being challenged. Whatever the evidence.

A friend of mine, a woman with 2 kids, 2 jobs, 2 degrees just told me the Moon Landings are fake.

At first I thought she was making up some joke. But no. She was deadly, deadly serious. She came out with some web sites. Some cold war face saving theory and some really paranoid stuff about "The gummint..they won't let you know THE TRUTH"

So, I say, yeah..I've looked at this too. And there are some really good articles about how its all fake. Its very entertaining stuff. And it does make you think...but all of these unexplained and impossible events have actually been explained on other websites. And its pretty conclusive even if you are not a scientist. And I pitched an easy one .. "The US flag blowing in the breeze when there is no wind on the moon.."

"EXACTLY!"

"..Yeah..well..that's because the flag has a wire frame..because there is no wind..so they had to have something to make it flag shaped to take the picture..And when they stuck the pole in the ground the flag is just moving from that inertia..because there is no resistance in near zero lunar gravity and atmosphere"

"So they SAY!"

"Well..not just say ..because ..the still photo does look like a moving flag, But the video shows exactly what happened and the flag does not move. Its a pretty common video. The wire extractor part got stuck, see..So the flag didn't extend properly.."

"Because THEY FIXED THE VIDEO ...THAT'S WHY"

"So...why did they "Fix" the lunar video, but forget about the still photos?"

"Ahh..haa..Not as clever as they think, are they..?"

So I gave up.

What is depressing is this person had clearly been researching the moon landings and had taken note of the conspiracy side, but refused to believe any of the conspiracy answers. Just, point blank, refused. With a childish "THEY are behind it." And it was me who picked the lunar topic. She was actually talking about how ISIS are selling the west oil and the whole conflict is about cheap oil and that's why we aren't fighting there.

{Something similar in the comments on another thread is what reminded me of this}

Bogeyman are everywhere. They control the media. THEY control the money. THEY control how much we earn. THEY control the world. And you can replace THEY with any group. Jews or Muslims or Obama or Gays or Corporations or even Cats and it works just as well.

Its so infantile. Its so worrying. And this girl used to be so normal..?

But..wait a minute..maybe...Oh My God..I've figured it out...THEY got to her ¬!

Hereis fairly good, easy to follow, conspiracy theory questions and scientific answers piece about the Apollo landing. But there are thousands more. Which is kind of depressing

The 10%- If you work in retail or hospitality, services or care and have to deal face to face with the general public; it is generally accepted that 10% are very,very strange indeed.

49 comments:

Suff
said...

You've obviously been bought off by TPTB Bill. I've seen this type of propaganda peace before, scientific journals, documentaries, even in school textbooks. Next post you will telling us you fell for whole world is round story.

Seems to me that people love a Good Theory. The criteria for *good* in this context do not entail accuracy or truth or anything dull like that, nor that the theory can withstand Occam's Razor or Popper's tests, but rather things like- being a rattling good yarn- making you feel you are 'in the know'- hanging together as a narrative with a vague, if perverse, internal logic- being entertainingly counter-intuitive / controversialist / paradoxical / anti-establishment- the theory-peddler having an answer for everything (usually starting with "ah, that's because they don't want you to know ...')

There is a less crackpot (though hardly less disreputable intellectually) variant of this: the belief in econometric theories and the price forecasts they generate

and this has much worse consequences than the lunar-landing stuff because apparently sane business people (aye, including some capitalists), politicians and civil servants not only give them credence, but sometimes act upon them

Suff : The world is definitely flat. Only those got at by Mossad think otherwise :}

Steven_L: And much sympathy to you. It must be doubly worse for you. As you get the hardcore. Intent on complaining to a HIGHER AUTHORITY, once they have been rebuffed by the rest of us.

ND; I don't mind the fun of it. I enjoy it. But there's a zealotry about some people.The SNP/Corby types insisting their economic plans are coherent, despite the evidence, is one thing.But adults,suggesting towers were rigged with explosives..or NATO invaded Ukraine. Or the Falklands was all about oil. Its quite odd.

But then..I touch wood to ward of bad luck..Yet I know that will do nothing at all to help. Maybe its our primitive ancestry. The belief that "The Gods control all"

I sat in a class where we looked at an empty plastic file wallet and came up with over 10 completely different meanings for the arrangement of the pre punched holes.One person got rather attached to their theory (a 10%er in hindsight).

Nowadays there are so many places to look for meaning.A few hundred years ago you could obsess about religion and that was about it.

What we see is not an explosion of weirdness, we see an explosion of things to be weird about.

It would be worthwhile examining the Corbyn weirdness from this point of view.

Many, many writers and media types dismiss him as an ancient Marxist looney, but I haven't seen any pieces which attempt to explain what's going on here.

Thousands of people are convinced that Corbyn has The Answer. Why? Who are these people? Don't they know that Corbyn's policies - social and economic - have brought financial ruin and humiliation to millions of people, all over the globe, for the last hundred years?

Are his supporters outwardly normal, but inside are all 10 percenters?

Dearieme - History of Art and some kind of textile, ceramic design degree. Currently doing a second advanced historical art course on the open University. Needless to say she knows an awful lot about art.

One that used to do the rounds (and probably still does) is that sodium lauryl sulphate - a common foaming agent used in cosmetics - is toxic.

Many moons ago, even before this blog, I had a lady come to see me who had been reading US-based websites preaching the evils of 'SLS'. Low and behold these websites were all angling at selling SLS-free 'natural' toothpaste, but this didn't concern her. She was convinced her Colgate was poisoning her, that this was a conspiracy and a cover-up and that was that.

Now this is the really dumb bit. The then head of London Borough of ****** Trading Standards - despite the public analyst telling us SLS was not in any way acutely toxic and was allowed to be in toothpaste in any concentration - made me get the damned tube of toothpaste and send it into the PA, to be checked for SLS levels - because "It's a safety complaint"

A lot of the problem is that many of 'the 10%' and their delusions are thoroughly entertained. There are council workers out there that do very little but manage the lives of their 'regulars'.

Best comment so far by Andrew; "What we see is not an explosion of weirdness, we see an explosion of things to be weird about"

Several things have contributed -

- degredation of standards of what were once considered "authorative" sources. We witnessed these spinning disembling on aregular basis which in turn has dimished their credibility and integrity - whether that is government, academia, medics etc etc. It is of course a different question whether they ever had them. I would suggest however that ethics are less and less of a consideration. hence fewer people believe what, may be 'official explanations.

- the nature of the world has changed from the safe assumptions we were fed 10 or even 20 years ago. I would suggest that the breathless cornucopianist Panglossian rhetoric displayed on ths blog is equally as weird as some theories I have encountered.

- polarisation of positions, with increased lack deferrence to experts, mistrust of information and changing facts, the standard respnse is to rubbish teh opposition, not try to understand it. We are seeing rhetoric as the default position, not enquiry - as much by those that wish to claim the mantle of realist as rationalist a smuch as the fruit looops and loonies.

"she knows an awful lot about art": in my undergrad days, when asked at a party what my degree subject was, I sometimes replied Assyrian Ceramics. Ooh, dim birds would say, that sounds hard. Bright birds would grin and nudge me in the ribs. In the unlikely event of a twenty-something reading this blog, young man I commend this trick unto thee.

I think we are, as a society, regressing. We do not live in a rational age. Even the TV news shows it; it's all about emotion and truthiness, never actual facts. Old Reggie Bosanquet might have been as pissed as a newt but he tried to make me well up.

Dearime: I know what you mean. I used to say I had a degree in "Occult Studies." A guaranteed conversation starter. In this case though. She does know an awful lot about art. Can talk you through not just the techniques but the history and the reasons behind certain inclusions/exclusions etc. Appeals to me.

Visceral : Kind of agree. Did a post on here a few years back about the MMR vaccine. Blamed Tony Blair for so destroying trust in officials that people would rather put their own children at risk than listen to 'official advice'. Of course, politicians have always lied. Gummer spring to mind.

Steven#-L : Always some ass covering official. I had a situation in Croydon where the cashier left a security tag on an item of clothing. As the alarm went off the guard asked them back into the store. Discovered error and apologised and sent them on their way. Few days later got a letter saying it was a racially motivated attack as the buyer was black. A solicitors letter too. Claiming £1000 compensation.

When I was asked about it, I explained I was there at the time..had seen the incident and it was handled properly. I further said this is Croydon. This scamming isn't uncommon. The solicitor probably isn't real. Just a headed notepaper..or a friend. Don't offer anything..don't admit anything..just respond with we will investigate with our own internal proess and ignore any comment on the £1000.

The HR bitch was so scared of "racial harassment" she sent a £500 gift card..which they then claimed was not enough and we ended up in a wrangle and eventually gave them another £500..All for nothing.

John Miller: A very good point. SNP would be back in the union now..if they had left.Booted from office and never likely to be anything but a protest party ever again. Their supporters must know this? Corbyn's supporters must know it can't be as simple as a magic money tree?

Andrew: I find the deliberate seeking of untruths worrying. For instance there are quotes from Churchill doing the rounds. bad ..bad quotes that sound nothing like him. They claim he forced the world to war for the sake of British business.people never check the source for these "quotes". Which show they are wholly fabricated. people don't want to know. They want to believe what they believe.Think of Nick's post a while ago about the closed minds in today's universities. A worrying trend.

Prof Puzzle: Thank you for that ..really good link. There was another one I saw by a photographer. Very similar and put the 'CTs' to the sword.

John Lennon's Imagine. That this became a blueprint - a meme, that took hold beyond, well... imagination !

"Imagine there's (sic) no countries..."

Except those pot smoking hippies didn't expect everyone to crowd to one place quite like they have. It suits the self loathing, anti British middle classes though - only I'd wish they WOULD self loath rather than have the working class pay the cost of their largesse.

Well go ahead, Emma Thompson and Sam Cam. No-one's stopping you giving away all your riches and moving umpteen unselected families into your home - so that you may suffer the same hardships as you demand of ordinary people.

"Bogeyman are everywhere. They control the media. THEY control the money. THEY control how much we earn. THEY control the world. And you can replace THEY with any group. Jews or Muslims or Obama or Gays or Corporations or even Cats and it works just as well."

Not so, if you think about it. For any conspiracy theory to be remotely feasible, "THEY" would ideally have certain characteristics.

One is extreme in-group solidarity - an attack on one is an attack on all. This also prevents people (or cats) making the group look bad by telling tales out of school.

The most fundamental reason why the moon landings couldn't have been faked is that there was simply too much to fake. Thousands of people worked on the flight hardware - rockets, capsules, spacesuits, etc. - and thousands more worked on the Apollo programme in other roles. They all had to believe that what they were doing was real and would work. Some of the spare Apollo hardware was used for Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project so they would have to be faked too.

The missions returned many thousands of photos of the moon from the surface and from orbit, hundreds of pounds of moon rocks and lots of data from instruments carried on the spacecraft or left on the lunar surface. No way you could fake all of that well enough to fool every scientist who studied it. Faking the moon landings really would have been more difficult than doing them for real.

A very well crafted post and all to undermine the anti-Tory questions I raised in another post recently - "She was actually talking about how ISIS are selling the west oil and the whole conflict is about cheap oil and that's why we aren't fighting there.{Something similar in the comments on another thread is what reminded me of this}"

Luckily you had an anecdotal friend handy who shared my views on Isis/Middle East but had some Moon Landings hookum tacked onto it. Otherwise she's look sane, right?

Its a bit of a peach that Libya-Dave had a dead-child photograph handy just as UKIP launched their anti-immigrant platform, isnt it?From Dave resists Europe to Dave-stands-shoulder-to-shoulder with Europe in one week.

Its a bit of a peach that Libya-Dave had a dead-child photograph handy just as UKIP launched their anti-immigrant platform, isnt it?

Do you know how that reads? It reads as if you are suggesting Cameron drowned a 3 year old because he wanted to upset Nigel's big launch.Even if you meant what I think you meant, which is wasn't it convenient that the international news media broke a story that got world wide traction, but especially in the UK, that's still conspiracy central.

Its Corbyn follower worthy.The whole world was worried about a UKIP launch that they conspired against Farage? That doesn't strike you as a tad unlikely?

And..you disbelieve my story? Even though I explained that the person was on a kick about Iraq and Blair and oil and all that crap. And it did remind me of your comment. Which was a pretty unlikely one.

The actual conspiracy is not that they didn't make all the equipment, but that they never went.In case they failed. Its all a bit Capricorn One.What would be the US response to a failed landing? I except similar to that of the fatal Apollo One that killed the three astronauts. A bad blow, but NASA would have coped.

Kev - I'm surprised you, as a father, can't see the power of that photo. A little boy, looking like any boy in a UK park, lying dead on a beach.

Why is that more evocative than the 70 men, women and children who suffocated in a container lorry a few days before? because it makes the event personal. I saw it and instantly thought of my own boy.This could have been him {unlikely I know - but that's how the heart works}

If i saw 70 people dead in a truck, I don't think of anything very much. Except these are dead people in a truck.

CU said similar to you. Surprised that the red tops went on this story. I'm more surprised Merkel said anyone can come to Germany. Now she will have thousand up thousand trying to enter.

Let's not underestimate what this global shift could do to our own people. I'm sure that photos of English toddlers, dead because they were denied cancer treatment on an overstretched NHS would be just as emotive but will NOT be allowed - certainly not with the associated cause-and-effect headline.

I see global feuds being imported into this country that could easily lead to the destabilisation of our own country - death of our own children on our own streets. Or real (very real) poverty coming to our country because - let's face it - only when Britain is as bad as whence they come will this flood stop.

War and famine was ever thus. Images of dead children always awful. But these images must not be allowed to dictate policy and - after all - the Left are highly selective about which images to dwell on. Tim Parry was never shown. The bodies of 7/11 never shown. An extreme right wing trying to push for a reverse policy of migration - kicking out the Irish or the Muslims might have tried to stoke up emotion with the mirror of this effect.

What do we expect dead children to look like ? And why weren't they shown when Blair and Cameron were interfering in the Middle East ?

Now we are being softened to allow biblical proportions of mass immigration here - this picture to neutralise the British right, an excuse to bring in millions of fit young men who have left vulnerable women and children in supposed 'war zones' and jostled and fought to get here.

This will result in the death of British people here - and probably already has and already is. Through road crashes that wouldn't have happened. Through murders that wouldn't have happened, through the denial of medical treatment that WOULD have happened but was denied because of 'shortages'.

Where are the photos of those bodies ?

And finally.

That poor child's father had left a country that our people holiday in. He (not us) put him on a rickety boat away from safety. To make an economic migration. That death was our fault only in that we reward queue jumping and people cheating the proper process of registration and application for asylum.

What is tha matter with you ? What is the matter with everyone, in fact ?

Since when have we been so easily manipulated ?

As a father I see my boy's secure, peaceful, free and safe future being taken away from 'adults' who are more like babies with candy.

In WW2 they were careful not to show us such images. That was when they wanted to keep our country intact. Note that only those imgages suiting the Left are shown. Thus we can tell which agenda is being foisted upon us.

The mass change of our culture and population - to the unknown - from one that was safe and peaceful to god knows what.

(Please read the Hitchens article linked. We do not save the world by destroying Britain.)

"Do you know how that reads? It reads as if you are suggesting Cameron drowned a 3 year old because he wanted to upset Nigel's big launch."

Of course I'm not saying that Cameron drowned a three year old but believe me - there are plenty of pictures of drowned three year olds out there and they have been out there for months, if not years.

The Left lead with it and Cameron has jumped on. The timing of this particular release - if not to get Farage on the hook but to get Cameron off it - is obvious.

I don't think it was to target UKIP. It was to shift national policy away from anything that looks like managed immigration to unmanaged immigration.

We have had nothing but wall to wall leftism from the BBC on this issue.

Thus Dave is free to shift from managed decline to unmanaged decline because the public outcry (coordinated by the Left and by actresses and pop stars) has given him the mandate to throw open the borders totally.

So he thinks. Well let's have a referendum on in unlimited and unprocessed refugees. Otherwise anyone who supports this should put up or shut up otherwise they are being disingenuous. Do the following:

- open up your spare rooms to refugees not of your choosing- foot all their bills, including medical care and welfare- pay their prison costs if they commit crime- pay compensation to their victims

Otherwise you are demanding that the lower classes pay for your largesse and that is not fair. By the sounds of things I figure that you live away from areas that would likely be impacted by a large influx of immigration.

PS, I have a heart and I was moved by that image. I was involved in major incidents such as the Marchioness, KX fire, IRA bombings, RTAs etc... some gruesome railway stuff too. Perhaps I am not as easily shocked as most.

Andrew and BQ. I apologise for my lack of levity. I have that in real life and rarely discuss politics there. This is where I vent.

My comment about Lennon's Imagine. I don't believe if conspiracy theories so much as memes and their flow.

Lennon did not start the Borderless World meme but he did give it its anthem. And like any state it cannot be strong without an anthem.

Lennon was notoriously spiteful, rude, selfish and quick with his fists. A hypocrite. If I am any of those things then my defence is that I don't ask anyone else to pay the cost of my stand on principle.

I wager that Imagine will be used in the coming weeks in celeb charity fundraisers and lobbying - from behind their bodyguarded events, gated compounds and communities of course.

A Labour win in 2020 and Britain to remain within the EU whichever way the referendum goes.

Kev. Thanks for the responses mate. I agree with about 80% of what you say. I only only really gdisagree in that the mood public softening to immigration is something that the government wanted. They most assuredly did not. Cameron knows full well that next years immigration figures of 350,000 might be 500,000.. Even 800,000 if the EU wide solution is adopted. His promise of tens of thousands will be another 'cast iron' one. And it might all be occurring as the leave campaign is on.

And the public would say "what dead boy? What's he on about? ..too many immigrants..I can't get me treatment and the bus service has been cut I have to wait 40 days for an appointment with a doctor who don't even speak no English..it's a disgrace..." Etc.

Last thing the government wants is to cave in to fickle public opinion.

You may recall the terrible, probably administration ending, damage Gordon Brown suffered when he had no prepared response to the BAby P outrage. He tried to stick with the " lessons will be learned" line and suffered badly for it.No politician can resist a public outrage call. Cameron was 100% right politically. Concede ground on 2000 or 5000 migrants, that barely amounts to a weeks worth. Wait for the story to move on.

Andrew the 2000 figure is entirely bogus! You either don't know that or YOU are in the pay of the THEM.The precise figure is 74.01 % of made uppery. any other figure is clearly made up..though each made up figure does move the genuine made up figure higher..so if we continue this dispute, you will eventually be right, but may have crashed the Internet.

On this very website we have a fairly steady traffic of page reads and comments. But suddenly, for no discernible reason, the traffic jumps 1000 fold. Like a seismograph spike. This is Russian or Chinese or Sri Lanka - Philippines traffic. It is not necessarily post related either.

Who is doing this mass monitoring? Why? Do they know, we know? Now they do? And who are THEY? Because these THEY are out there.( though I suspect THEY is a bit of software.. But that's not good either..Rise of the machines and all that)

Right ..I'm off to family funday! Which is something we have in the West Country. It's like the Craggy Island fete from Father Ated..I must avoid losing a child in the tunnel of goats..

@BQ - 'Everyone who disagrees with me is a conspiracy theorist' is the vibe I'm getting from your posts. 'If your not with me, youre not rational.', that sort of thing. That sort of approach is the one taken by psychopaths and those with personality disorders, you know. Its also approach one taken by governments and large corporations because - like the deranged - these institutions never have to take personal responsibility for their actions. No one is held to account.

I'm neither a a Corbyn nor a Farage supporter, although you seem desperate to paint me as either, or perhaps both.

I wonder if the dead child had been killed by a UK airstrike in Syria would we all be mea culpa -ing our way to another half arsed policy response?

Thanks for the kind response, BQ. And be assured that despite the sometimes terse comments I like everyone here on a personal level.

I've met Blue and Nick and both are wonderful chaps.

David Cameron.

I think this piccie gets him off the hook, somewhat. The concerted Leftie outpourings create the impression of a consensus when we don't know if there is one. This means he can continue to fail on immigration with a new lease of life. "You wanted us to continue with it !" Phew !

The BBC, the Thompsons, the Bonos, the Geldoffs - know full well the rack they are putting our democratically elected leader on. So much easier for him to cave in - especially if wifey and her Mumsnet chums are giving him ear'ole as well.

18 months ago a demented Polish taxi driver wiped out two toddlers and their father leaving only their mother alive. They were in Devon on holiday from Ireland.

Can you imagine the outcry if The Express had decided to publish those pictures to further their immigration skeptic position ?

Nor should they have been allowed to.

National policy must never be dictated by emotive pictures - nor the emotional debate that follows. What is needed is hard headed rationality.

BQ - The biggest spike I had in my traffic went to about 5000 in a day when I posted a picture of a cute cat.

Another of my posts went viral and got quoted in a Daily Mail article when I commented that the Rev Sally Hitchener was a bit too vampish to be a member of the CofE clergy and her appearance on TV dressed as a dominatrix at a crucial time had probably swung the House of Laety (?) from voting for the ordination of women bishops.

Must agree with MyLazySundatyName - the tone of this post and the subesquent comments is that any disagreement is a "conspiracy theory" - of course deliberately conflating more outlandish theories whether it is in Syria, or any other circumstances which SHOULD BE questionsed is a cheap shot.

Remember the term was itself was coined in 1967 by the CIA's Clandestine Servies unit to manipulate language as part of ongoing discrediting of those questioning the Kennedy assasinations. So to dismiss something as a "conspiracy theory" in itself has a long enough history of dubiousness.

Secondly BQ's suggestion that"Do you know how that reads? It reads as if you are suggesting Cameron drowned a 3 year old because he wanted to upset Nigel's big launch." is utter drivel. That was NOT what was siad - again good schoolby debating tricks but not to be tken seriously - I am suprised E-K even had to grovel.

The idea that propaganda arms of governments would not happily murder maims and fix things* (unlikley in this case, i grant), is childishly stupid. The image of the deda boy is mawkish sentmentality - you are being played.

My own view is that the next set of overtures will be for military action in Syria to stop to "help the refugees". Which is of course patent bollocks as most of those coming over are not not Syrian ,nor are they families. but single men from sub Saharan africa, pakistan and other points east. So more manipulation for us and yes Camerbourne are utter war mongering scum.

NO wback to the tone of the posts this referal to the "They" is of course again more misdirection od argument - all good pantomime rhetoric but not what is actually being said.

(*)Remember MK Ultra is real and not a conspiracy as much as you would like to dimiss it as such.